


the loneliest number since the number one

by squeezedoutofmiracles



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Blood and Injury, Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Casteism, Chucklevoodoos, F/M, Family Feels, Fingering, First Time, Found Family, Gore, Growing Up Together, Heavy gore, Helmstrolls, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mind Control, Multi, Sadstuck, Sexual Harassment, Slow Burn, Threesome, Torture, brief mentions of condypsii but its deliberately vague because idk if the prompt sender wanted it!, cw condesce, moulting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-16
Updated: 2017-07-16
Packaged: 2018-12-02 16:45:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11513394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squeezedoutofmiracles/pseuds/squeezedoutofmiracles
Summary: It happens once when they're young and they just got out of a big fight; they're messy and covered in small bruises, purple dust, the stars shine bright and they fall on Meulin's lap, right in the middle of the plain, and every kiss they exchange is burning with adverted danger, red pink black grey with the thump-thump-thump of their hearts.They're alive.-It happens once when he's nothing but an entire spaceship pulsating with the faint chant of the stars, drunk on sadness and crushing speed, cold, huge and blood-less. A computer sings somewhere and he remembers the thrill of his laugh, the sharpness of her claws.They're dead. In his head they're on the forest grass again.





	1. 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AliveArsenic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AliveArsenic/gifts).



> Hey Alive Arsenic, your prompt was real goddamned intimidating but I hope I did it justice! I was so glad to see ancestor representation that I just had to, and oh dear, theres 8k of backstory. Sorry! Hope the smut satisfies!

They’d pulled him, kicking and screaming, from the wreck. Coughing and sparking, blinking as the dust settled around them and trying to turn his palms on them to shock their pans into a frenzy so he could scramble away on shaking doe-legs, but a hot square little palm had slapped down on his cheek and his whole world just froze.

The dust settled, covering them all in a fine creamy ash, and two shapes hung over him silhouetted against the moonlight and the pink sky.

“Are you OK?” A young rough-hewn voice came, hoarse from shouting. He recognised it, he had been the one yelling himself hoarse as the cart of psions rattled past, heavy ladened with bodies. He still sounded raspy from his screeching, and Mituna took a stuttering breath as he took his red-hot little hand from his cheek, leaving him spinning as the world rocked around him, like the cart was still tumbling.

“Anything purroken?” Says another voice, and a girl leaned in with hair all wide around her shoulders, puffy and dusted with ash, eyes big and green and keen as she sniffed at him, reaching in to take his hand and angle it about, checking him over for scratches.

Mituna yanked his hand back and hissed, holding it tight against his chest, bony fingers knotted up against each other as the noise of two hoofbeasts shrieking off towards the front of what had used to be the slavers cart, and was now a pile of splintered firewood. The beasts kicked up dirt as they surged away from the wreck, leather bonds cut and bridles wrenched off. He wondered how they’d got free, glad but still wanting to know how they’d thrown off the huge heavy leather bindings that leashed them to the caravan.

The answer stepped through the dust, skirts swishing around her ankles, bloody from the wrist up all deep noble blue on jade cloth, lips dark and dripping and her skin alight. Mituna must have screamed, though his pan was dizzy enough with all the psionic discharge that he didn’t know it, because her brows sloped down all empathetic as she swooped closer, legs obscured with floaty skirts, and when he tried to scramble away his back came up against a jutt of broken off burned up wood, scraping black lines against his bare back.

The two young trolls looked at him, his pan-pounding terror and the way his claws dug at the dirt, and the one with wild hair frowned deep as a gully. The other caught on faster, eyes going all empathetic in a mirror of the big rainbow drinker, reaching out to him like he was trying to calm a feral snarlbeast.

“No, no, it’s OK! She’s with us, she’s with me, she’s my mother.”

Mituna snarled at the outstretched hand, a thin growl rattling in his throat as he gathered his legs up closer. “Your /what/?”

The girl rolled her eyes so hard they looked like they were going to roll out her head.

“Just pawl her your LUSUS. We do this EFURRY time.” 

“She isn’t a lusus! She’s my mother and that’s what we’re going to call her!” The hoarse one said, scowling with something like a little pout at the girl who kept on rolling her eyes. The mother swept forwards like a cool breeze, kneeling down to their level, and set a hand on each of their shoulders.

“Leave him be. He’s just had quite a shock, doesn’t need us all crowding him. Come now, we need to be moving, it won’t take them long to notice a missing cargo this valuable.” She said, straightening and pulling them with her. The boy looked like he sorely wanted to stay, while the girl stood more readily, raising a hand and waving goodbye.

“Bye then, whoefur you are! You’re welcome.” She grinned, nodding at him decisively, showing off gappy yellowed teeth far sharper than his. He glanced between them, still silent, and the jade turned to leave, but the little hoarse one stayed put for a moment as they turned to the treeline and set off.

“...I’m Kankri. You should probably get moving, they’ll find you soon, most of the others are… well, all of them went that way.” He pointed off towards the horizon, where a blue and red haze silhouetted a couple dozen bodies moving down the path, some carrying others, some levitating just slightly. “...I hope you do OK.” He said, and he reached out to pat Mituna’s shin, awkward and hopeful. His hand was so beautifully warm and heavy and it felt a little bit like flowers blooming up his leg until he shook it off and wrapped his skinny arms around his knees, waiting for him, for KANKRI to get the message and back off. 

Mituna hadn’t realised he was wearing a cape. What a loser.

They moved into the trees, the jade and olive blended in almost instantly and the little coal-hot boy went after them, his cape snagging on brambles. Mituna looked down the road that the other yellows took, saw them kicking up dust in the distance in a happy hazy red blue cloud. Idiots. Following the road. Where did they think they were going?

He looked to the forest, the slight indent in the grasses where the three slightly-dirty trolls had disappeared still fresh. Fresh enough to follow.

He picked himself up, dusted himself off, and started following Kankri the same way he would for the rest of his life.

\---

They fed him. Clothed him in something that wasn’t cheesecloth. Tended to his wounds, knitted him back together, and the distance between them shrank a little every time Kankri or Meulin - her name was Meulin, he learned that over hopbeast stew that the jade lovingly prepared and fed him bowls of - smiled at him bright enough to blow away a little of the dark. Or they shared a joke they had to keep hidden from Porrim, or scrambled to hide in the same bush as a cart rumbled past.

Porrim had to leave them sometimes, go and pick up odd jobs in taverns and left them to play in clearings or caves or brooks. More than once some opportunistic scavengers tried to take a crack at them, especially with an “untapped battery” rattling around, but they learned to take care of themselves. Meulin was a surprise, turned out she could hold her own better than anyone Mituna had ever seen fight without weapons before. She turned their faces into ribbons and went too far more often than she didn’t, and sometimes Porrim came back to find a dead body all sticky and congealed on the floor of wherever they’d been left with her charges huddled up in the tree, Meulin bristled up and Mituna sparking as he kept them all afloat.

They spent so much time together. Kankri talked a lot, and his words wove in ways Mituna had never seen before. Back at the battery pack there’d never been any cause for storytelling or flowery words, things were short and blunt and words were just there to get you from one place to the other, but when he told stories…

When he told stories the air came alive with them. Mituna could see it, how his eyes got bright, how his breath caught up in his throat and he choked up on emotion when he talked about trolls he’d seen dressed in pure woven gold, and trolls who didn’t have anything. He’d seen acts of such divine kindness, he told them about when Porrim had snuck him around swaddled up in a pile of scarves, and about the sights and sounds of lands he’d only ever heard of from shopkeeps or sailors.

He told Mituna about cruelty in the world. How trolls with money that jangled in their pockets and didn’t deserve to keep it looked down on the castes that they outranked. He’d never seen a seadweller in the flesh before, never seen a purpleblood, but Kankri told him about all the cults they cooked up in their heads to justify their nobility. How they poured their lives into religions that the rest of them couldn’t see, Gods that wouldn’t touch anything lower than a sour purple, painted up their faces when they went into battle and killed in the name of their Gods, with such fury and conviction.

They saw a battlefield once, about two sweeps after he started walking with them. They hopped from place to place so frequently he had trouble piecing it all together in his head, and couldn’t tell if they were right on the whitecliffs or landlocked, because everywhere they travelled was somewhere new. Here the grasses were all yellow, and the moons were just rising and turning the sky gold, and he watched as the grass turned yellow to brown. And brown to red. And Porrim put out an arm to stop him, freezing as she looked around at the trampled grass of the planes and took a frozen breath, trying to cast her sleeve in front of his face and turn them around before-

Kankri wailed, eyes welling up as he stared at the bodies. He sobbed hard, and Mituna’s eyes went wide, stepping back a little as his eyes flickered over the ruin, Porrim dropped to her knees in front of Kankri and wiped at his cheeks with her thumbs, hushing him, brushing his hair back from his face, shushing and soothing him as Meulin darted past her. She moved like an arrow loosed from a bow, shooting over the trampled ground, legs eating it up as she flung herself to the side of the first fallen soldier she came across. There were no noises beyond Kankri’s burbling sobs, and he didn’t know where to look, there was so much to take in, all the bodies, all the noise from Kankri crying like this for the first time, Meulin running from body to body, eyes welling up, body getting wrought with tension until she looks down and starts trembling, raises her boot, and stamps it down straight through a skull.

Mituna flinched violently, and Porrim turned around with Kankri pressed to her chest.

“MEULIN! We do not deface-”

“THEY DIDN’T EVEN HAVE WEAPONS!” 

She looked up, knees splattered blue, the highest blue he’d ever seen.

“THEY WEREN’T SOLDIERS. THEY WERE… PEOPLE. JUST PEOPLE.” She threw her arm out, and everyone's eyes went down to the nearest body. Some sort of peasant. Brown. Its head had caved in, its eyes had popped like… like what? What did eyes pop like? What dribbled down your cheeks and congealed on your nose when a club burst it out your eye sockets?

“They slaughtered them they just.... They just culled them. For fun.”

Her voice lost the fight in it, and her shoulders drooped in increments. She was a little girl in the middle of a battle field. No. Not… not a battlefield. A slaughterhouse.

And she looked so lost.

Mituna moved closer, moving as light as he could, trying not to heave when his boots squished up in a puddle of brown, setting his jaw and moving until he could set a tentative hand on her shoulder. Squeezing gently. She looked up, shivering slightly, jaw trembling like she was fit to fall apart, and Mituna remembered what Porrim had done and just… reached out. Touched her cheek and shushed her, the sounds coming out slightly lispy through too many tongues and teeth, breath shivering slightly. He reached up into her hair (she was so cool to the touch, it was only one caste but it felt like a dozen degrees) and brushed it out of her face, where the tears stuck it to her cheeks.

“It’s OK.” He murmured, and she sniffed. The field was silent.

Kankri set a hand on both of their shoulders, sniffing, eyes glossy and cheeks red, and all at once they collapsed into a hug, arms wound round each other, shaking just slightly. Kankri sniffled some more, Mituna reached over to muss his hair, and his fingers stroked over Meulin’s, already wound up in there. It was… ok. Good. Feeling her fingers scritching across his scalp under his own, and letting their fingers knit together, just for a minute. 

When they pulled apart he felt so warm. Warmer than he could justify, standing in the middle of the barren field, with an olive pressed up against his side. Things moved slower, things stayed in the right order, nothing jumped or skipped, and when Porrim stepped in to shepherd them away, he went easy.


	2. 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two can be as bad as one, its the loneliest number, since the number one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What, still no smut? Yeah, sorry about that.

They grew. Mituna grew first, his bones got sore and he got cranky and bitter and snapped whenever they tried to wake him before he was done, and one day he wouldn’t wake up and Kankri screamed as his skin flaked off when he tried to rustle him awake.

If Porrim hadn’t been there to educate them on moulting they might have mercy-culled him in his sleep, but instead he got swaddled in blankets and left somewhere dark to grow a new skin and shed the old one, and they had to stay put for six whole nights. It was excruciating.

When he shoved the clothes aside, groggy and new and still rehealing, he unfolded himself into new angles and miles of limbs, and he was so. fucking. tall. He wobbled when he walked, and Kankri rushed over all little and stout and grinned from ear to ear when Mituna rested an elbow between his horns, and refused to let him see the top of his head for a week.

Meulin came next, and she came out of the makeshift coon stronger, limbs wrapped up in more sinew and muscle, muscle Mituna couldn’t bite through with his nubby teeth if he tried, and he did. A couple times when her elbow ended up in his concave thoracic cavity he gnawed on her shoulder in a grouch, and they never did anything more than graze, and she never had any complaints about it. Kankri remained little for so long.

He never moulted, not all at once. He grew little by little, drawing up until his horns measured against Porrim’s shoulders, hide darkening a couple shades, but Mituna was irrevocably the tallest, and he loved it, every time he could hold something just out of his reach or lean over behind him to snatch something off the stall he was busy perusing. It was bliss, every time he got an undignified squawk out of him, or passed something to Meulin over his head.

She got better at fighting. She got faster, more powerful after the moult. In woodland she could scale trees in seconds, drop down from overhead in a flurry of claws. Mituna was getting better control with his psi, more than just the brute force they wanted them for in the battery pack, he could sculpt it and wield it, burn through things with swift precision, and when they slept in a cave he spent some of the night dancing patterns off the walls, burning smoking paths into them, leaving pictures smoking on the walls.

They collectively started picking fights. Meulin started it, in their defence. She’d pick her moments when Porrim wasn’t watching, because Porrim didn’t like to raise a fuss. Kankri hated it, of course, he would grab on her arm and yank at her and hiss that they wouldn’t get anywhere trying to punch reason into them. She always ended up with purple and blue on her knuckles anyhow, and they would rush in, invariably.

He let her start fights, and then together they’d finish them. Often Porrim would only find out when she had to help them get the stains out their garbs.

Couple times they caught a crowd. Mostly it was other rusties wanting a piece of it, once it looked like they were winning. A couple times it was other coldbloods, but they really tried not to be that stupid, not to jump them or let Meulin jump them when they were teamed up, though sometimes the thumping behind their auriculars got to them, and they said a thing or two too much, commented on her rumblespheres, how they’d take her hiveways, how they bet she’d never had a good blue bulge up in her sin-hot nook, how bout it, shitblood, wanna take this bad boy for a-

They never got far enough to apologise.

And people really liked it. People really really liked the way Kankri spoke, when he was all hopped up on adrenaline with blue and green all over his robes and his eyes were wide but his words still knitted and wove together and made perfect fucking sense, and Mituna’s eyes glowed with images of a world where Kankri didn’t have to wrap up every pulse point, or keep himself shrouded away from others touch, and Porrim didn’t have to wake them at the crack of dawn to move, and there weren’t flyers up telling people to turn in their hemoanomalous friends, rewards crowing from every squawkbox.

A world where they weren’t just sludge at the bottom of the gene pool. And people listened.

\---

They stopped moving quite so much. It was difficult when people complained, because they wanted to listen to what Kankri had to say. It was weird, not turning away and scurrying into the shadows whenever Kankri tried to talk to someone. Occasionally they had to get him something to stand on, because the little no-mould upstart would get lost in a sea of heavy burgundy and rust horns, and people would cheer him on, and yell for him to step up higher. Meulin called them his sermons, and it caught on, and nobody seemed to get the joke.

He remembered one particular one, where Kankri had been standing up in the fork of the tree, Mituna leaning against the trunk, eyes trained on Kankri for when he inevitably fell. There was a crowd of trolls maybe… five deep in every direction. Mostly yellow or lower. A couple olives, in passing. And they were getting really into it, raising their voices to echo whatever he said back at him, hanging on the end of every sentence, pushing closer and swelling with the rise and fall of his voice as he wove a tapestry of a world without castes, where they could all live in harmony, and Meulin watched up at him with a face all full of adoration, just as wrapped up in his stories as the rest of his crowd. Mituna gave a thin smirk and went back to watching Kankri.

There was a harsh scraping laugh from the back of the crowd, and someone threw something at Kankri. It hit him on the shoulder and he stumbled, giving a full bodied ‘oof’ as every head whipped round to see the shape of a big squarish blue standing towards the back. Two. Three of them, teeth flashing in the low light, weapons already slung at their sides.

“CHANGE THE FUCKIN CHANNEL, I HATE THIS STATION!” One roared, and the others laughed along, watching as the crowd scurried away from them and they pressed closer. They were all dressed up in heavy leathers and blues as deep as the ocean, clothing fine and worth more than Mituna’s whole life.

Kankri regained his footing and scowled, straightening up and jutting his chin out.

“You don’t have to listen.”

Meulin was up, softness gone from her face, shoulders square and hands tight by her sides.

“Shit, you’re yellin’ loud enough for the whole fuckin valley to be privy, don’t think we got much of a choice but to listen to this slurry.” They said, still grinning as they stepped closer. The crowds parted sickeningly easily, thinning as some turned to walk away, shedding off all ideas of rebellion and going back to a quiet life. “We got a problem here? Do we need to call some kinda superior to deal with this?” They quirked a sculpted brow, and Mituna glanced between all five faces, again and again, taking it all in and processing it as fast as he could, his pan crossing wires and firing off every which way as the air crackled between them.

They stood at the front, silent apart from the occasional chuckle, some of the crowd still pressed close enough to feel like a fight ring. 

“You don’t scare me.” Kankri said, voice even and soft. Mituna felt his breath freeze up in his throat, and the bluebloods spluttered and snorted.

“Of course we don’t. You’re stupid. Bet we scare your little bitch matesprit though, don’t we?”

They reached for Meulin so achingly slow, compared to how she reacted. In a second there was a line opened up all the way down the inside of his forearm, and he screamed. They all jumped back a little, when it started pouring down his arm, out onto the ground that drank it up so fast, and silence hung around them heavy as a shroud for a second before everything just

erupted.

A brown, or he would always swear it had been a brown, lunged for one of them with a roar and knocked it right about the head with nothing but her horns. The blue lurched back, choking, and another spun with its glaive out. Another troll pressed in, knuckles coming in hard against its jaw, and another piled on, and another, and soon there was a brawl so loud and messy that Mituna found he couldn’t process shit from fuck. It was a blur of bodies, arms swinging and voices raised, blood fell across his boots and he didn’t even think to check the colour.

Arms wrapped around him and hauled him away, but not before he got an elbow to his cheekbone and something inside him cracked, pain splitting all up one side of his face. Porrim heaved him away, and grit her teeth when he started flailing, shouting after Kankri, reaching back for him and trying to dig his heels in. He was getting too big to manhandle, too gangly for her arms to contain every bit, and he thrashed free just in time for Meulin to burst out of the fray with Kankri in her arms, hooked around his chest and heaving him with her. She was missing a tooth, lips bloodied, arms smattered with every colour from burgundy to blue, and Kankri had a red slash weeping across his forehead, dripping down over his brows.

His pan pounded, he surged forwards, hands clapping to his cheeks with his eyes flashing their concern as he smeared the blood up his forehead. Kankri found his feet, stood up all woozy, set his hands on Mituna’s wrists and stroked over his pulse, shushing him as Mituna gripped his face tighter.

“Hey. We’re OK.”


	3. 3

They fell in the grass, exhausted. They’d kept on walking, and walking, and walking until daybreak worried at the horizon and they were forced deeper into the woods. Porrim murmured that they would not be pursued during the daybreak. She insisted they needed to eat, and left Mituna in charge while she turned away to go and grab something that could be skewered and cooked up.

The silence bubbled around them, alive with the fauna of the woodland. Something chirped overhead, and a brook babbled not far off to the side, and the wind sang through the trees. The stars sang, when Mituna lay back his head on Meulin’s lap, and she wound her fingers into his hair, chuckling softly.

“My boys.” She murmured, stroking their hair out of their faces. Kankri’s wound had scabbed over, all ugly and crusty under the soft curls that fell onto his forehead, and Mituna’s brows knitted together as he reached to push them into his face, trying to cover it over properly. When he glanced down there were bright red eyes fixed up on him, blinking slow and heavy as he fixed up Kankri’s hair. He blinked right back, one blue eye and one red both taking their turn as he got caught up in that stare. Kankri didn’t look away, not when he reached up to touch the side of Mituna’s face. Not when he brushed his hair behind twin ears, or when he let his fingers linger there at the softness of his throat.

Mituna swallowed, blinking again, lips parted just slightly as he watched Kankri up so close. His face had changed, from how he remembered him pulling him out of the wreck. More hard lines. Less grubfat. He had a couple scratches, but not as many as Meulin, Meulin who went and picked fights for him, who got in scraps for the hell of it and the pusher-pounding glory of dragging an apology out of someone.

When he glanced up she was still smiling down to him. Lazy. Satisfied. The purrbeast who got the heavy whipping serum.

Kankri closed the gap, leaning in and pressing his lips to Mituna’s, so slow and soft that it felt natural as breathing. Mituna’s breath stuttered in his thoracic cavity, and Meulin’s hand soothed over it, chasing away the shivers as he glanced up to her, listening to the chuckle chased by a purr that rumbled through her.

It was. OK. It was good. 

Mituna leaned in and kissed him back, tentative, teeth catching on his lips and hand wandering to his hip, curling in the material of his overshirt, hot from the pursuit and loose around him. He wriggled closer, wide eyed as he shuffled nearer, feeling like he’d get called out any second and something would flip and change up under him, but it sank away a little when Kankri kissed him again and his tongue stroked over Mituna’s bottom lip. Something short-circuited inside him and he gave a little gasping pant, hand balling up in his shirt as Meulin soothed a hand up and down his posture pole, up into his hair, claws scritching over his scalp as Kankri’s hand went to his thigh, hot enough he could feel it through the bodysuit, and something inside him clenched.

He didn’t know where to put his hands. Where should they rest, if they should rest, if they hurt, if his claws were digging in, and they jittered up over Kankri’s arm and into his hair and back down again until Meulin caught his wrist and wound their fingers together, shushing him through a chuckle.

“Do you want to stop?” Kankri murmured, words all lax and sleepy, and Mituna HATED himself for interrupting it.

“No! No, I just, I don’t… I can’t… I don’t know how to fucking, any of this, none of this, I haven’t, I never-”

“Me either.” Kankri murmured, glancing up to Meulin, who shrugged too.

“Me eifur. It’s OK, Tuna.”

He glanced between them, eyes still big and wide, and she stroked up through his hair again, between his horns, dragging the hair the wrong way and making his eyes spark. It sent a shiver through him, and Kankri’s coal-hot fingertips dragged over his throat, down to his collar bones and over his bodysuit, and he shuddered.

“Do mew wanna come up here?” She said, voice low. He shifted without resistance, up to his knees, and she moved closer, setting a hand on his waist. He was kneeling too high, and he knew it, but he didn’t know how to put his legs, if spreading them was too presumptuous, if she’d think he was shoving his bulge at her if he-

“Get down here.” She smirked, reaching up to cup his head and pulling him down to her level, leaning up towards him, mouth melting up against him and body curving towards his with her eyes shut and tongue stroking across his lip, her purr evident against his lips, and it felt like it rattled through every bit of him. Kankri pressed up against his side, an arm around his waist squeezing slowly, until Meulin moved to leave Mituna wobbling slightly and blinking sleepily when she moved to kiss Kankri.

She slid a hand up into his hair, stroking her fingers around the base of his horns and kneading softly, pressing her body up to his as their mouths opened, cautious, jaws flexing slowly, and he saw Kankri’s tongue press up against hers.

“Hot.” He murmured without thinking, and they broke apart with a snort.

“Yeah mew are.” Meulin smirked, sliding a hand down from his back to his non-existent ass and slapping it firmly. “Mew gonna get me undressed or what?” She asked, sitting back a little and watching Mituna’s pan short-circuit again, eyes glowing like they were trying to vent heat. She reached up to her collar and pulled a catch, and it came open at the shoulder, the front panel easing down until her rumblespheres caught the moonlight.

Of course he knew she had them. They were always right… there. And they bathed together. And sometimes when they got in fights her clothes ripped, but it was never a big deal. But now they had time to just… appreciate it. Admire it. The shape of her body, so different from each of them, and they shared a glance as Mituna raised a hand towards her chest and lowered it again. She took his hand and placed it, quite firmly, upon her titty.

“Go on.” She said, making sure he couldn’t drop eye contact. “I’m toughpurr than I look.”

“You look pretty fuckin tough, Meulin.” He muttered, sliding his hand from her rumblesphere round to coast over her ribs, down to where the tunic folded at her waist and up to her back, sighing as he leaned in and their breath caught together. He kissed her, hand tangling in her hair, his thighs splaying to let him lean in closer, and Kankri pressed up behind her, hands on her waist as he leaned in and pressed his chest against her back.

Her hair was so thick and wiry he worried his hands would get lost or stuck, and they’d have to cut them out, but all the worries got cut short when her hand went to his hip and pulled him closer by it, strong cool hands pulling him in tighter and pressing him tight against her. She was so soft, her body all smooth curves, thick strong hands pressed over the jut of his pelvis, and he drew a gasp past her lips as she sighed against his mouth, a shiver racing up his side whenever her hand shifted its grip. 

His hips rolled forwards, and she gave a pleased sound in the back of her throat, low and breathy and urgent as she leaned closer and kissed him hungry, teeth scraping over his lips in her urgency as her hand dragged from his hips to the front of his pants, fingers pressing back between his thighs, and Mituna made a broken little sound of pleasure that burbled out of him unbidden, and Kankri echoed it right back.

“Fuck, Tuna, you alright?” Kankri murmured, face buried against the side of Meulin’s head, breath hot against her ear and hands busy around her waist.

He gave a soft moan and nodded as Meulin’s hand stroked over him slow, fingers pressing up between his thighs through the thin forgiving material of his bodysuit. It didn’t hide shit. Felt like her claws could tear straight through the troll-saran-wrap excuse for clothing if she put her mind to it, and the thought made his thighs flinch together tighter.

“Mew want me to get you out of that?” She said, voice breathless and heady, both hands fumbling for the zip as Mituna nodded, his hands scrambling to help. Kankri pulled away, shrugging out of the cloak and tossing it aside, unzipping those stupid fucking leggings down the side and struggling out of them. Soon they were all naked and surveying each other, Mituna kneeling wide-eyed, staring down the other two. She looked strong, and he almost wanted to cover himself up in contrast, skinny and spindly all made for lifting up and channeling psi, not for fighting with tooth and claw. Kankri looked sturdy, he’d put on some muscle over his dozens of tiny pupations that never really seemed to lead to anything, but most of his grub fat was gone. He had a scruff on his lower belly, and Mituna knew he wanted to see where it went, where the trail ended, and wondered if he’d end up with hair like that after a couple more-

“-na? Mituna?” Meulin touched his arm, shaking him slightly, and he blinked hard, eyes fizzling for a second as he came back to himself. She chuckled and he blinked again, running a hand back through his hair and giving a sheepish grin as she reached to set a hand on his ribs, stroking a thumb over a yellowing bruise where someone had caught him square in the side. “Stay with us. Don’t think mew want to miss this.” She said with a grin, setting her hand on his thigh, and his pan sparked like a sword to a grindstone.

Her fingers, cool and sturdy and strong, stroked up the inside of his thigh and she watched his expression as they touched the hot wet skin of his nook for the first time, teasing the lips apart and watching him shudder. He gasped, thighs parting, shivering from the tips of his horns down as he felt her press into him, a dull ache between his thighs and it felt like she could steer him about by his bones, like she had a grip on something deep and primal and he’d do anything in that moment for it to not stop.

Kankri stole his gasps away, hand pressing to the back of his throat as he coaxed him in for a kiss, swallowing up the gasps and whimpers as she stroked - he couldn’t call it thrusting, not really, it was too tender and cautious and slow - into his nook, her fingers slick with his arousal. He saw a stroke of dark flushed green and realised her bulge was out, thick and smooth and coiling in the air back on itself, almost tying up in knots stroking along its own length. Kanki reached out and stroked his fingers along the length of it, and Meulin pressed closer as he did, moaning soft and stolen noises when his fingers burned against it. Every bit of him was so hot, and against her olive skin it must have burned.

Mituna wanted to feel that burn.

The heel of her hand pressed against his sheath, rocking pressure against it in slow heady waves as her fingers thrusted into him slow and steady, and his hand went to her shoulder, bracing himself against it as the touches turned his knees to jelly, and Kankri kissed him again and he couldn’t help a shudder and a whimper as his bulges spilled out from the sheath.

There was a moment of pause and silence as they wound against each other, all six eyes fixed on the pair of them that wrapped around each other like they had something to be bashful about, dripping geneslime and making a whole big mess of it.

Tearing his eyes away from the mess his bulges were making, loving all over themselves with aggressive frustration, he realised everyone was kind of. Staring. 

“Two?” Kankri said, voice hoarse.

“Uh. Y-yeah.” Mituna said, thighs trembling as Meulin remembered where her fingers were and pressed deep into him again, groaning and turning to press his face into Kankri’s hair. It could bury easily between his horns, and he huffed out a sigh as Kankri’s spare hand went to his bulges, wrapping around the base of both of them and giving a slow squeeze.

“Fuckin shit-dicks.” Mituna hissed, hips bucking forwards as Meulin worked at his nook and Kankri started up a slow squeeze-and-stroke. Desire sparked low in his belly, and their touches kept on fanning the flames, it burned hot and hungry down in his guts as Meulin leaned to nip at Kankri’s throat, drawing warbling purrs from him that had his hand stuttering on Mituna’s bulges, and in an instant Kankri unsheathed, bulge coiling bright brilliant red between his thighs and stretching around, looking for a nook to bury in.

Their hands fell in sync, and he would never be able to understand how they did it, Kankri’s fingers weaving in between his bulges and Meulin’s working into his nook, all pressing sparks up into existence inside him, coaxing him into a squirming mess, and he rocked with them, kissing Meulin hard and mouthing hopelessly at her jaw, up to her ear, blunt teeth catching the edge of her ear as he whimpered and felt it building and building and-

“Let go, Mituna, it’s OK.”

The slick sound of her fingers thrusting into him were what got him, his bulges knotting tight around Kankri’s hand and pulsing as he came, his face buried against Meulin’s neck, she grinned as he nuzzled hard against her throat and turned her head to kiss a deep-flushed ear, purring right up against his auricular sponges and sending his head rattling round.

He fell away to the grass, back into the coolness by the brook and let the dew soothe him as he lay back, panting, drinking up air as his senses came back to him bit by bit.

They clutched to each other, Kankri and Meulin, allowed to be selfish now one of them had finished, hands clutching each other ravenous as they kissed like they were starving, chasing their release. Meulin pushed him back, a low growl in the back of her throat, and Kankri went easy with his thighs parting like it was what he’d been made for. She settled her palms on the inside of his thighs, running them up over the fire-red bruises on his stomach, his chest, up into his hair as her body covered his and their bulges twined together, Kankri’s legs wrapping tight around her hips and pulling her in tight against him.

Mituna watched as she ground down against him, Kankri’s head turned to give up his throat, her fangs scraping deep flushed lines into it, her tongue flickering out over his pulse as their bulges pulsed and squeezed together, her hips spreading his thighs with each thrust, and he babbled fragments of thoughts, pleas, praise, begging for her as she took him. They came together in flushed and gasping mess, her hair wild, slicked to her back and down her arms and all over Kankri’s face. All over his belly was a red-green mess, and he lay back, spent, exhausted, words coming in little snatches between breaths.

Meulin smiled down at him, smiling bright as the moons, and stroked his hair out of his face, leaving the scar across his forehead on show. She couldn’t care less. Battle scars were super sexy, even if they came from thrown bottles or falling out a tree.

Kankri turned his head lazy in the grass, looking over to Mituna with eyes heavy lidded, reaching out for him with a sleepy smile. Mituna blinked slow, brain gone sluggish, working on one thought at a time until it was completed.

Hug. Yes. Good.

He shuffled closer, legs damp with dew off the grass, and snuggled up into Kankri’s grip. Meulin kneeled over them, hands going up in both their hair, stroking it out their eyes and smiling all the while as Mituna kept blinking heavier and heavier, giving a big yawn that showed off both tongues all the way back.

Meulin sighed, pouting. “Need to get those up in my nook next time.”

Mituna gave an abrupt ugly snort of laughter, and they all fell about laughing, sticky and hot-flushed and so goddamned alive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Smut, God, finally, I almost forgot this was an explicit fic.


	4. 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It happens once when he's nothing but an entire spaceship pulsating with the faint chant of the stars, drunk on sadness and crushing speed, cold, huge and blood-less. A computer sings somewhere and he remembers the thrill of his laugh, the sharpness of her claws.  
> They're dead. In his head they're on the forest grass again.

They called him The Psiioniic, and it’s the dumbest name he ever heard.

Meulin got something cool. Disciple. He fought long and hard to be called The Disciptwol, but it didn’t stick. No idea why.

The crowds got bigger and bigger, and more hopeful, and more ardent, and more hungry to be told their life was worth more than the work they put in and the geneslime they put out. Kankri fed them, nourished their starving pans with the promise they were useful and good and valuable, and one day he couldn’t see the edges of the crowd, and he could see banners painted blood red, gaudy and bright, proclamations and demands. 

It was a rush. Porrim didn’t like it, but she was just old, set in her ways, placated by having her babies grow up past their first moult and old enough to fend for themselves, she just wanted them to keep on living.

They weren’t living, said Kankri. They were surviving. They were rusty cogs in a cruel machine, and sooner or later it was going to break.

It broke, alright.

It broke right when Kankri got snatched by the cape, yanked back so hard by a big troll in a dark cloak that Mituna could hear the air go right out of his lungs. He yelled, eyes bright and sparking from the moment Kankri cried out, but the blow to the back of his pan sent him flopping like a sack of starchbulbs.

He woke up to Kankri screaming.

Flesh sizzles when it hits hot iron. Crisps up and flakes right away, and Porrim screamed so hard, Meulin begged and writhed, wrists slick with blood, olive dripping down the back of the prisoners garb as she yanked at her restraints, and Mituna just… stayed. They’d dampened his psi with something, something on his horns and in his head and over his eyes, fuchsia tinted and dark and winged, and when he strained and struggled something in his pan whispered that it weren’t motherfuckin worth it.

They shot Kankri, and the screaming stopped.

His screaming, anyway. Meulin’s reached a new timbre, and something went crack, and she shot from her bonds with blood-slick wrists, painted olive up to the elbow, and threw herself at his feet, clutching at his leggings and turning on the blue with eyes that burned.

When Mituna tried to scream for her fingers smothered the thought in his pan, cloudy and incense-heavy and fogging up his clarity. The goggles got steamy and his face got hot, and he still couldn’t scream. Even as the executor drew another arrow, form perfect, and Meulin stood her ground. 

He didn’t shoot. And didn’t shoot. And didn’t shoot.

Meulin took the opportunity he missed, and moved faster than Mituna had ever seen her, shot from the crowd, vaulted clear over a teal that tried to get in her way and gave the fucker a heel square to the jaw, snapping their head right round on their shoulders as a voice right up in Mituna's pan screamed for someone to mother FUCKING stop her. But nobody did. She got away, and at the edges of the circle there was a murmur of dissent, fins waving all dissatisfied, their entertainment cut short.

Porrim was dragged away, still sobbing and begging, pleading with anyone who could hear, he was her SON, he was her all, they couldn’t do this- Mituna thought dimly that it was too late to beg for his life, he was twitching like a stuck squealbeast, red dripping down his chest, irons still sizzling-

“KILL ME! KILL ME YOU BLUE BASTARD, THAT ARROW WAS MEANT FOR ME, YOU COWARD, YOU GODLESS COWARD, HE NEVER HURT ANYONE, AND YOU KILLED HIM, YOU KILLED MY _SON_ , KILL ME, _KILL ME_ -”

He never saw the blue again. He never saw Meulin again. Porrim he saw, but never alive.

Kankri lived on, somehow. His words, his last dying scream seemed to echo round the world, even as Mituna was dragged off to a duty he should have grown into.

He couldn’t fight as they strapped him into the rig. As the pink tendrils of the Good Ship Lollipop bore in through his flesh, and Her Imperious Condescention herself swung by with fat pink lips and hips that she had to sway in through the door, old as the stars and so hateful he could die.

She called him free range. She called him organic. Said mothergubbers would be steaming jealous, if they weren’t already, and cooed over his psi readings. Something plugged in just right, and all at once Mituna was drowning again, numbers flooding in from every way, and his psi flooded outwards.

Something broke in a shower of sparks, and he was back in the room, and she shrieked with cackles as a technician scrambled for a fire extinguisher, and the numbers cut off. Highest psi readout they’d ever gotten. Off the charts. Then they’d have to rewrite the charts, she said, stepping closer, hair getting all over the tendrils as she reached up and brushed his hair aside with a talon.

They were going to get along just fine.

\---

When you’re an entirely digital entity the line between “real” and “virtual” is pan-bendingly thin.

Input from his wetware became so incredibly insignificant that he stopped using his audiovisual input almost instantly, submerging in noughts and ones as his pan folded out, and out, and out and out and out as his consciousness got pulled in every direction and the inside of that pink room became meaningless in the flicker of a ganderbulb-shutter.

Every single piece of data on every single troll in the planar system that ever had graced the dirt of a registered planet was known to him. He ignored the red burning file, as best he could, turned his back to it and focussed on other duties, things he had no choice but to obey.

Of course he’d resisted to begin with. Tried a non-violent protest. Shut himself down.

In a fit of rage he’d blown out every capacitor in the ship, and they’d had to sulk in hyper space for… How long? Nights, at least, not that he could tell. In the ship he could measure time to the smallest imaginable fraction, more precisely than anything else in the planar system, the highest most advanced technology all plugged straight into his pan, and he broke. all of it.

Imagine an ocean being condensed down into an ice cube. It felt like every band in the world snapping tight around his pan, cutting him off from everything, and he came back into that fucking pink room, salt water lapping around his ankles, psi reel in the cieling malfunctioning and sparking and everything far far too cold. His lungs felt like they’d brined over with disuse, the wetware keeping everything he needed circulating in perfect homeostasis, and his ribs burned as they dragged in a manual breath.

For that stretch he wasn’t a ship, he was a troll, trapped and stranded and hurting, and he learned never to do it again. She came to visit him, drawing up a chair she had carried in, propping up her heels on a wire that tugged against his spine and he hissed, so full of vehemence and hate that she giggled at him and blew him a kiss.

The system was ready in two nights, but she made him wait three. Took pleasure in eating calamari in front of him and offering him a bite from straight between her teeth, and he spat at her, mouth too dry to make anything other than a disgusting dry hacking noise, and she laughed hard enough to spit her fish straight across the room.

She made him ask nicely to get plugged back in, manicured fingers hovering over the command button. It took her an hour to break him down, until she wrung a “please” out of him, breathless and exhausted, and counted it as good. The last thing he saw was her blowing him a big pink kiss, before the data flooded back over him again, and it felt like home.

\---

There was unrest in every corner of every galaxy. Unrest, led by some big-horned brown, someone chopping up old rhetoric and remixing it, some freak with wings, and he laughed. Another one. He was asked for a data file on Rufioh Nitram and it came together in an instant, printed out on sweet smelling paper and delivered to the hands of whoever needed it. He looked like an asshole. He.

Sufferist.

There was a system-wide glitch for the barest of moments, not even a hundredth of a second, or enough for anyone else to recognise it, but The Helmsman knew.

They’d… rebranded him. The Sufferer. Stripped off what he’d done through life to earn him his title and given him a new one that neatly capsulated how it had all come to an end. With him writhing in chains, bleeding, screaming and swearing and nothing at all like how he’d lived.

He’d lived so tender, so careful and kind. He’d seen Kankri run across a street to pick up a lost wriggler, carried it around until it found its lusus again, cooing to it and letting it nuzzle into the folds of his cloak. He suffered, of course, but he was so much better and brighter than that, he was so hopeful, all he’d done was inspire hope and a burning desire for change and justice and…

Now what?

Something inside his pan - his real actual old fashioned blood-and-guts analogue pan - clicked, and something long locked away opened. Some sweet-smelling memory, after a rally that hadn’t ended with him being swept away, he’d leaned over and wrapped an arm around Mituna’s waist and looked up to him with bright fiery eyes, and given a deep throaty chuckle.

His pusher ached, and a lump burned in his throat, eyes watering.

The memories never faded. Anything he’d had in his pan when the ship got plugged in stayed, backed up and reinforced and preserved. The smell of the forest where they’d crashed, the sound of the brook where they bathed, the way Kankri smelled and the way Meulin purred her Rs, and how she could pick them up in one arm each and swing them off the road when the mood took her.

It ached the same every. single. time. 

Years didn’t stop. He could measure out time to a hundredth of a thousandth of a second, the time it took to birth a star, and he lost himself in it, drowned in the space between suns as The Condesce kept on ruling.

When she got lazy her lusus got hungry. The Orphaners were meant to keep her fed, but a spat between the church and the sea meant that pond went unmanned, and he wondered briefly, when he felt the pang through his core, if they were trying to outlive the clowns. Cull off everything under violet, and then feed her.

One of his alarm systems started bleeping, soft and unintrusive, a little red blinking light to let the technician know that the systems were malfunctioning just outside normal parameters.

The technician who lay twitching on the floor, clutching his pan, grey matter spilling out through his teeth.

He felt fingers on the back of his pan, hot thumbs digging in, kneading out a little bit of the pain. The great thing about being virtual was that anything you dreamt up had just as much body to it as things he was fed based in fact, and Kankri’s thumbs pressed into the ache that formed at the root of his neck, where her song reverberated just a little too strong for him, and Meulin stroked his hair out his face.

“Shh, Tuna. It’ll be OK.” She said, smiling sadly. No. Not sadly.

Her face changed with a shimmer of pixels and she was grinning, giggling, pushing his hair back out of his face and slicking it back and saying he looked like a greasy violet. Kankri chuckled behind him, arms wrapping around his waist, hands running over his ribs and grub scars and up his chest, down his back, easing the aches out of him and making his skin tingle in its wake.

Meulin leaned up and kissed him, chaste, lips barely brushing his. He was the one to push for more, parting his lips, tongue stroking out over her lips and, God, he hadn’t touched anyone like this for… thousands, hundreds of thousands-

She didn’t count. It wasn’t like this. She’d invented quadrants for this very reason, so that things didn’t intrude on each others mess, and whatever he did with her was strictly cordoned off in one very messy part of his mind, full of fuchsia and black and hatred so dark it put the gaps between the stars to shame. All they had was each other. He was kept alive on her whim, he lived a hundred thousand times longer than any ochre had business to, and yet here he was. Because she hated him. Her hate literally sustained him, and whatever they did was harsh and hot and sudden and it always always hurt.

Meulin kissed him soft and patient, Kankri stroked his hands under the edges of his suit, unzipped it tooth by tooth and slid his hands under the edges to smooth over his skin. His hips pressed forwards against Mituna’s ass, and Mituna pressed back, he could feel the hot squirming shape in Kankri’s pants and he gasped up against Meulin’s lips as she threaded her hands in his hair, stroked around the base of his horns, the ache in his horns pervading, sinking down into his skull just a little.

Kankri bit him on the back of the neck, just gently, teeth dull enough that it ached rather than stung, and there was a pain like something had broken much deeper.

Meulin comforted his whimpers away with kisses, and wiped away the yellow with her thumbs, chasing the tears away with her tender lips, hushing him as Kankri reached between Mituna’s legs and squeezed at his sheath, sighing against his ear.

“Meulin, I…”

She kissed him, held his jaw tenderly in both hands, nuzzled at his jaw, and it hurt her so hard to let him say it.

“I’m so scared.”

She sobbed, just softly, and Kankri pressed two fingers inside him and Mituna gasped, curling off into a sob as Kankri kissed up under his ear and nuzzled against him so hot and fierce, and Meulin took his horns in each hand and squeezed so gentle, thumbs rubbing up the tips.

“Mituna.” She whispered, kissing the corner of his mouth and nuzzling at him until he opened his eyes, watching how her eyes brimmed, and it hurt in a deep tight knot in his throat that he couldn’t swallow round. “I love you. So much.”

“God, Mituna, I love you, I love you so much, I’m so sorry.” Kankri clutched him tighter, the arm around his waist tight enough to snap him in half, the fingers inside him moving hard and slow and aching every time he moved. “I left you, I didn’t want to, fuck, not ever, I’m so sorry…”

He sobbed as Meulin pressed another teary kiss to him, and Kankri never stopped touching him, and he never wanted him to, when his bulges spilled out Meulin took them in her hands, and Kankri rocked with him, his bulge pressed up against his ass, and Mituna came with a sob of his name.

He feels it becoming real, like the flesh knitted harder under his fingers as if they weren’t knotted up in the tendrils of the wetware. His tears glistened brighter, strained tearful smiles grew wider and they grip at his arms, really grip at him, and pull on him, unrelenting, choking back laughter and sobs and he felt himself falling and falling and he

and he lets go

and the fish sings to him, that mass of tendrils far under the purple seas back on the shores where they crawled out the caverns, messy with gore and screeching to be fed. Her lusi sings to him, and she screams, and far far off she bursts into the room where all the alarms in the world are screaming, and the stars shriek around her as she touches his face and slaps his cheek hard enough something inside him snaps. Don’t you let me go. Don’t you leave me. Don’t you dare. You don’t die until I tell you to, don’t you dare, don’t you dare-

Kankri and Meulin don’t let go. And he’s left cold in her arms, head lolling, gore dripping from his eyeballs as the mother of all lusi screams in his pan

and he laughs.

And they laugh with him. And in their arms he’s

 

home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It started out with a ship  
> How did it end up like this  
> It was only a fic  
> /It was only a fic/
> 
> I really hope you enjoyed this as much as I enjoyed writing it, your prompt was so beautifully written that I really hope I did it justice.


End file.
